III
A choir of blind singers began the hymn to Aton.
They had been tramps and beggars walking along the high roads from village to village. One day the king heard them at the gates of Aton's temple and liked their singing so much that he made them temple choristers—that God might receive praise not only from the happy, the wise and the seeing, but also from the blind, wretched and ignorant.
There were seven of them. They sat on their heels in a row before the king's tent, dressed only in short white aprons, their limbs thin as sticks, their bodies, with distended stomachs and the ribs showing through the skin, blackened by the sun, their heads shaven, their faces wrinkled; the folds of the skin near the mouth resembled those of an old sick dog; they were snub-nosed and, like dogs, seemed to be always sniffing; there were narrow, inflamed slits where their eyes should have been.
The leader of the choir sat in front playing a high seven-stringed harp, while the others, clapping their hands in time, sang in nasal voices but with remarkable intensity of feeling. They looked straight at the sun with their blind eyes but, not seeing the god of light, Ra, they glorified the god of warmth, Shu:
"Shu our Father, Shu our Mother!
Weeping we have lost our sight.
We praise the sun out of the night.
Have mercy on us, poor blind men!"
And when they finished the melancholy song they began a joyous one:
Glorious is thy rising in the East,
Lord and giver of life, Aton
Thou sendest thy rays and darkness flees,
And the earth is filled with joy.
The roof of the temple was flooded with sunshine, but the seven courts below were still in the shadow and only the high tops of the pylons were gilded by the sun; the bright-coloured pennants on the masts above them fluttered gaily in the morning breeze, white doves flapped their wings joyfully and winter swallows, in their whistling flight, cleft the air singing to the sun, shouting and shrilly calling with joy: 'Ra!'
The king mounted the pyramidal altar once more and threw a handful of incense into the fire. The flame blazed up, turning pale in the sun, clouds of rosy-white smoke rose in the air and immediately similar clouds rose from the three hundred and sixty-five altars in the seven courts below: anyone seeing it from a distance would have thought the city was on fire.
Slowly raising his arms to the sky, as though offering an invisible sacrifice, the king proclaimed:
"All there is between the eastern hills and the western hills—fields, waters, villages, plants, animals, men—all is brought as sacrifice to thee, Aton, the living Sun, so that thy kingdom may be on earth as it is in heaven, O Father!"
The black harvest of human heads bent down like the harvest corn in the wind. Trumpets, flutes, citherns, harps, lyres, timbrels, cymbals, kinnors combined with the thousands of voices into one deafening chorus.
"Sing unto the Lord a new song, sing unto the Lord, the earth and all that therein is! Give unto the Lord glory and honour, oh ye tribes of the earth! Let the heavens rejoice and the earth sing in triumph! Rejoice, Joy of the Sun, the only begotten Son of the Sun, Akhnaton Uaenra!"
Gazing into the king's face, Dio thought with as much joy as though she were already seeing the Son Who was to come: "no son of man has been nearer to Him than he!"
Only high officials were admitted into the enclosure round the king's tent. But beyond the enclosure a special place was set apart for the new converts—men of all classes and nationalities—Babylonians, Hittites, Canaanites, Aegians, Lybians, Mitannians, Thracians, Ethiopians and even Jews.
Suddenly Dio saw in that crowd Issachar, the son of Hamuel. He was watching the king intently, his mouth twisted in a malignant smile. Dio could not take her eyes off Issachar's face: she was trying to remember something.
The singing stopped and in the sudden stillness the king's voice was heard:
"Lord, before the world was made, thou hast revealed thy will to thy Son who lives forever. Thou, Father, art in my heart and no one knows thee but me, thy Son."
"Cursed be the deceiver who said 'I am the Son,'"—Dio suddenly recalled Issachar's words in the Gem-ton Chapel and, looking at the king again, she thought with terror: "Who is he? Who is he? Who is he?"